Fig Leaves & A Grumpy Jesus: Renaissance to Baroque Art episode artwork

EPISODE · Oct 2, 2025 · 48 MIN

Fig Leaves & A Grumpy Jesus: Renaissance to Baroque Art

from Not Just the Tudors

Have you ever wandered through a museum and thought: Why is the Virgin Mary always dressed in blue? Did they really use eggs in egg tempera—and did it make those paintings smell weird? And why, for some reason, does baby Jesus sometimes look like a tiny grumpy old man?Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Verity Babbs, art historian and comedian, who is on a mission to shake the dust off art history. They take a whirlwind tour from the Renaissance through to the Baroque, taking in fig leaves, duels and murder.MORE:Durer: The Great Renaissance ArtistThe Tudors' Portrait Artist: HolbeinPresented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Wintle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever wandered through a museum and thought: Why is the Virgin Mary always dressed in blue? Did they really use eggs in egg tempera—and did it make those paintings smell weird? And why, for some reason, does baby Jesus sometimes look like a tiny grumpy old man?Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Verity Babbs, art historian and comedian, who is on a mission to shake the dust off art history. They take a whirlwind tour from the Renaissance through to the Baroque, taking in fig leaves, duels and murder.MORE:Durer: The Great Renaissance ArtistThe Tudors' Portrait Artist: HolbeinPresented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Wintle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Fig Leaves & A Grumpy Jesus: Renaissance to Baroque Art

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Have you ever wandered through a museum and thought: Why is the Virgin Mary always dressed in blue? Did they really use eggs in egg tempera—and did it make those paintings smell weird? And why, for some reason, does baby Jesus sometimes look like...

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